Buenas tardes!
My 9 month mark is in two days and I feel like I just got here yesterday... ANYWAYS, I am basically the happiest girl in the world for the following reasons:
- This week was incredible!
- The people we are meeting and teaching here are INCREDIBLE and progressing so so much!
- I am staying in Sudley as an S.T.L. with Hermana McCracken another transfer!!!
- I got to see my brothers and Momma yesterday over Skype for Mothers Day and they are happy, healthy and SO DANG CUTE! The youngest recognized my voice and would stare at my face on the screen and smile/giggle. I DIED! I am so grateful the Lord is watching over them while I am here. Only He knows how hard it is for me to be so far from them. He is definitely providing the blessings promised in D&C 31.
I NEED to share an amazing experience I had this week. We are teaching a young and very special young woman, "Moon". Moon and I have very similar conversion stories, it is almost mind blowing! She was introduced to the church at a young age by her best friend and was taught by Elders and ALMOST got baptized. The difference between our stories is that her parents never gave her permission to be baptized, they told her she had to wait until she was 18. It was hard for her but she continued to go to church and mutual with her best friend. Over the years for many different reasons she had to stop going. The missionaries lost contact with her a while ago when she suddenly became uninterested in the lessons. She is 18 now and we just so happened to find her! We have had two lessons with her but the lesson this week was amazing. She shared her story about how hard it is to go to church alone, her fear of being the only member in her family and how no one understood her. I was like "Hm... I think I kinda know what that's like..." hahahha! I shared my experience and explained how being a faithful member of the church even though my parents aren't has actually STRENGTHENED my relationship not only with God but with my parents as well. I also shared all the miracles I have seen being a member and preparing to serve a mission. Moon literally said, "Dang girl, you should write a book." Hahahaha! It was the perfect timing and the perfect place. She opened up so much to us and is now one of our best friends. All I can say is Heavenly Father's plan is SO perfect. If you feel lost, if you feel lonely, if you are going through a hard time DO NOT give up. He knows what He is doing and one day you will look back at the hardest time in your life, see how much it has helped you and why it needed to happen. And miraculously enough, it will have the power to help someone else. Isn't that what the Atonement is all about? Christ willingly felt all our pain and all our sins so we wouldn't have to do it alone. It is a privilege to be that support for someone else.
"Brothers and sisters, all of us at one time or another have or will feel lonely, sick, depressed, poor, or far from home. Thankfully, we have an Eternal Father and a Savior who understand us. As we go to Them, They will take us by the hand and help us through every challenge. And brothers and sisters, at one time or another we will all know someone else who is lonely, sick, depressed, poor, or far from home. Our Father and the Savior may direct us to help others, and it will be our privilege to do so." - Elder Kevin R. Duncan of the Seventy
I am just going to stop there because NOTHING will top my experience with Moon. Here's a fun missionary selfie taken this week on that one day I wasn't dying with allergies and a sinus infection. (I'm all better now).
I love you guys and hope you have the best week! Happy Mothers Day to all you amazing mothers, everything I am I owe to my mom!
Los quiero!
Hermana Tapia
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